The best sermons are the ones lived. I agree, as I have lived my share. One of these involved a mother hen and me.
As a preschooler, I spent my days roaming the grounds of our family farm. Maybe “grounds” is not the best word, as it invokes images of well-manicured English gardens. In actuality, our land was cracked and hard, except for the plot around our frame house. Mother religiously watered that parcel, praying for it almost as much as she did our family.
Those days included cotton, cows, and neighborhood cook-outs, where men fried up mounds of catfish and women provided heaped bowls of pinto beans, potato salad, and freshly snapped black-eyed peas. As a child, my role was to keep the swing squeaking and my hands off the deviled eggs until serving time.
Mama’s deviled eggs were a fish-fry favorite because our eggs were fresh, gathered daily from our own chickens. I suppose we raised “free-range” birds before it was in vogue, as Mama allowed them to peck and scratch the terrain to their heart’s content. To protect them from coyotes each night, Mother shut the hens in the barn, where they nestled into wooden boxes lined with hay.
Wisdom would say I shouldn’t have entered the barn that morning. But, the cheep of baby chicks had a magnetic effect on my four-year-old curiosity. As I stood at the barn door, the chirping of living pom-poms irresistibly drew me inside. I squatted down to their level and clasped my palm around the nearest yellow puffs—the fearful peeping and squeaking only heightening as I scooped up yet another into my lap. The babies, soft and skittish, were a precious, helpless tuft of fur and feather.
I still vividly remember the hen’s entry into the barn. With feathers outstretched, she barreled belligerently around the corner at top speed. She wasn’t wet, but she was definitely mad. As she flew at me, pecking and thwapping her inflated wings, I screamed, dropped the chicks, and tucked my head underneath skinny, cowering arms.
Fortunately for me, I, too, had a mother in the area. Mama had no wings, but she had a broom. Brushing aside the hen, Mama scooped me into her arms. Once safe, I turned to see the frightened little pullets gathering underneath their mother’s wings. We all had a harrowing experience that day.
Our heavenly Father likens His watch care to that of a mother bird. Sometimes, He is like “a hen protecting her brood” (Matthew 23:37), and sometimes, He covers you comfortingly under the refuge of His wings (Psalm 91:4).
Like the chicks, life isn’t always underneath the soft down of feathers. In times of crisis, you may cry hopelessly, afraid of a pending and malicious grip on your situation. Yet, He reminds you to be “anxious for nothing” because “the Lord is near” (Philippians 4:5-6). He mothers you for good, whether gathering you near or allowing you room to mature (Romans 8:28; Hebrews 12:10).
May you and I realize how very helpless we are. Our one action is to trust the watch care of our Parent. When fear overwhelms you, remember the chicks. They do not sow or reap, “yet your heavely Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they” (Matthew 6:26)? When in comfort, will we remember to be thankful for His wings? In all things, we can give thanks, for even when we fall from the safety of the nest, He will scoop us onto His wings (Exodus 19:4).
Indeed, our most terrifying experiences prove to be our best-lived sermons.